Over the last few months, I’ve started to describe how I feel using the illustration of a ShamWow. In case you haven’t heard of it, an overly-excited man with a heavy Brooklyn accent named ‘Vince Offer’ introduced the ShamWow in a now-famous 90-second 2007 infomercial spot. Its description is as follows: “the ShamWow is the original super absorbent multi-purpose cleaning shammy towel cloth that holds up to 10x its weight in liquid.” “Doesn’t drip, doesn’t make a mess!” claims Vince.
If only the same could be said for me.
Lately, phrases like “I’m fine,” or “I’m tired,” or “I’m feeling burned out” have begun to lack enough oomph to express the varying states of my interior life. That’s where ShamWow comes in.
Some days, I’m like a dry ShamWow — able to absorb the spills of the day, whatever they may be. I’d answer emails without irritation, reply to texts, clean up my dog’s shredded bits of her toy without complaining. “Doesn’t drip, doesn’t make a mess!”
Other days, I’m a bit more like a ShamWow that was used to dry all the camping dishes. My smartwatch tells me to monitor my stress levels and suggests I “relax with a breathing activity.” My eyes become alarmingly baggy. My coffee cup becomes a holy grail. But I keep going. I feel soggy and am most definitely weighed down, but I have lived up to my product description: I can hold up to ten times my weight in (emotional) liquid!
But ever since Lent began, I’ve felt more like a ShamWow at the bottom of a deep, dark lake that is stuck under an old tire. I’ve come to realize that it takes a lot of strength to wring out the Super Absorbent Multi-Purpose Cleaning Shammy Towel Cloth that is my burned-out brain. And I sure don’t have it.
I do not like feeling this way: wrung out, worn down. I enjoy being efficient, productive, prolific. I want to be “durable and long-lasting, ready for any job!” as Vince attests in the infomercial. I want to be a person whose actions inspire others to utter the ShamWow tagline: “You’ll be saying ‘WOW’ every time!” I do not want to be seen with the distinctly Lenten lens that reminds me and everyone else that I am limited, dependent, assailable … human. There’s only so much mess one can absorb.
I’ve been reading the book of Ezekiel since the start of Lent. And let me tell you: it’s been a slog. Most days, I open my Bible and let out a sigh. “Here we go again.” The repeated passages about sin and rebellion have not exactly released me from my Lenten funk. My prayer journal reads pretty much the same each day. “Yeah God, this is another doozy. I haven’t got much to say here.” Ezekiel is tough. There’s part of me that wants to stop reading it and throw in the (super absorbent) towel. But as I’ve scribbled those repetitive and frankly complaining prayers each morning this Lent, I’ve found there’s good news in it that I need to soak up this Lent.
Throughout Ezekiel, God’s people are shown to be disoriented, disobedient, and living in a land of dusty, dry bones. For years — generations — everything has been a mess, and one of their own making, at that. “Our transgressions and our sins are heavy on us, and we are wasting away because of them! How can we survive?” reads Ezekiel 33:10. I have repeatedly seen myself in the story — the story I have read with disdain and dislike. If I’m being honest, I don’t enjoy reading Ezekiel because I don’t want to admit that if left to my own devices, I’d waste away, too.
These last few week weeks I’ve felt like a mess, too. I have barely read or written anything. My creative capacity is the lowest it’s been in a long time. What I say next is might sound strange, but I mean it: thanks be to God.
I say that because I think my burned-out, weighed-down state is bringing me back to God. My buzzing brain is what allows me to be creative, constructive, a contributor, but those very traits can also keep me from calling on and communing with God. Eugene Peterson said that the Sabbath was an “uncluttered time and space to distance ourselves from the frenzy of our own activities so we can see what God has been and is doing.” My ShamWow brain has needed a Lenten-length Sabbath.
So while reading through Ezekiel has wrung me out a bit, I want to keep reading. I want to, as Eugene Peterson writes, “see what God has been and is doing.” Though I’ve always been a reader who adamantly believes in not skipping ahead in a book, I have heard that there’s more to the story than testimonies of transgressions and descriptions of dry bones. Someone spoiled the ending of Ezekiel for me many years ago, and I’m glad they did.
“O my people, I will open your graves of exile and cause you to rise again. Then I will bring you back to the land of Israel. ‘When this happens, O my people, you will know that I am the Lord. I will put my Spirit in you, and you will live again and return home to your own land. Then you will know that I, the Lord, have spoken, and I have done what I said. Yes, the Lord has spoken!’” (Ezekiel 37:12-14).
It’s true that this Lent has not felt super hopeful to me. I am tired. I am troubled to be living in a messy world of war and climate change and a million other matters that weigh 10 times too heavy on my mind. But strangely enough, the book of Ezekiel is wringing out my hopelessness. That book I’ve been slogging through is slowing me down enough to see that perhaps God was there, here, the whole time. The story of Lent does not end with death, but with life — with breath. Christ was not held by the grave; he rose again. And because of that, we will live again with him, too. And that truth really does make me say WOW every time.
“Look! I am going to put breath into you and make you live again! I will put flesh and muscles on you and cover you with skin. I will put breath into you, and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am the Lord.’” (Ezekiel 37:5-6 )
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I think it’s a testament to Fleming Rutledge’s question of who has the verbs? God does. God is the one doing these things: putting the Spirit in me and putting breath in me (the same thing). When I get like a thread-bare sham-wow, it’s always helpful to remember God is the one with the verbs and not me.